students

IABC is the premier organization for communication, business and journalism students. We offer a variety of resources and opportunities for students who plan on entering the communication profession. Get insights from leaders in the profession, make valuable contacts, and supplement your academic education with practical training to get your career started.

The business card: a small, understated piece of paper that every professional has in their arsenal. At networking events, happy hours, and off-site meetings as well as during business and even personal travel, you should never be without it. Why is this 2 x 3.5 inches of paper so important? Aside from having a memorable personality, it is the only way people can follow up with you and, more important, keep in touch. An exchange of business cards presents an opportunity to expand your network, which can come in handy immediately or in the future for job advice or possibly a career change.

Many people get business cards when they enter a company, but anyone can have business cards made. If you are an intern, a freelancer or even between jobs, get cards that display your contact information and maybe your business interests, such as journalism or history. This could be the gateway to a new job. Read the rest of this entry »

Whether you’re looking for your first full-time job or just a short-term gig, there’s one thing you must learn to communicate about right now. It’s you.

Did you realize you’re now another communication project to add to your portfolio? If not, it’s time. But you don’t need a fancy website, ad budget or well-designed collateral to reach your goals for this campaign. You can go far just using these four simple (and free) tools. Read the rest of this entry »

Standing out in today’s job market is tough, particularly as a new graduate. Building a strong personal brand — and regularly maintaining it — can be key to your job search and career success. Not only does a personal brand help you stand out among other job candidates, but it also helps to forge new relationships with others in your field, ultimately leading to new opportunities.

As kids we are told that in order to succeed in life we need to get good grades at school. Now that I am about to enter into the communication industry, I have learned that good grades aren’t the only things you need to prepare for the workforce. These days, employers want to see what you can do outside the classroom; they want to know that you are a well-rounded individual who would be a valuable asset to any communication team.

Volunteering can provide you with invaluable experience that adds to your portfolio and gives you great practice in communicating in the “real” world. It also looks great on your resume. Although employers look at grades to see how competent you are at completing tasks, this is not the only aspect of your resume that they examine. Volunteering has become very important to employers as it shows that you are not only interested in honing and furthering your skills but that you also take an interest in the community. Adding to your portfolio with activities other than schoolwork, networking and using contacts from professional associations like IABC are also extremely important. Read the rest of this entry »

Many factors are important when you’re applying for a job. Your résumé, letters of recommendation, samples of work from past communication projects—and tattoos. Yes, tattoos are a form of “personal branding,” but as up-and-coming communication professionals, we also need to be aware of how we “brand” ourselves, literally and figuratively.

According to a 2010 Pew Research Center Study titled Millennials: A Portrait of Generation Next, 38 percent of Millennials (ages 18–29) have at least one tattoo. What Millennials fail to remember, however, is that although they have the right to express their personal identity, the people hiring them are often from a different generation, for whom tattoos may not be as socially acceptable in the workplace. Read the rest of this entry »

There is more to creating an A+ resume than throwing your information on a page. A resume that rocks (an A+) is what it takes to give you the edge over the competition in the job market. When compiling your resume, you need to take into account the adaptability, reader-friendly format, as well as the way to lay out the information that is going to stand out most to your future boss.

Do you want to be recognized internationally for communication work you have completed in school, internships, or on the job and have a chance to win the $500 Sharon Berzok Student Award? Sue Johnston (Gold Quill judge from IABC/Waterloo) has written the following article to help you craft a winning entry for the 2012 Student Gold Quill Awards.

be a delightful display of strategic thinking, effective planning, good use of resources and creativity? Will the story be revealed in lively, uncluttered language? Will it be a winner?

Members of IABC Waterloo sincerely hope so. Once again, we’ll be judging the Student Gold Quill Awards. With three universities and a college in our community, we’ve learned to expect the best from students. We were disappointed when not one 2009 entry met the standards for winning an award. Aiming to change that, we assembled a few tips to help you impress us. It worked. We were impressed – even dazzled – by some of the entries submitted by students.

Manipulation. It’s a term that many of my friends outside of the communication field jokingly claim I’m being trained to do. Unfortunately, given how the history of the public relations profession is blemished with ample cases involving deception and dishonesty (arguably the main drivers behind manipulative practices), I don’t blame them. I’d probably be just as skeptical from the outside looking in. But I’m now on the inside looking out, and have thankfully learned how the communication profession has evolved and is now guided by codes of ethics meant to marginalize this and other forms of malpractice (the IABC code is one example). Thus manipulation is something best to avoid as a communicator, a toxin if you will that is poisonous to one’s own reputation. But as a budding practitioner not wanting to step on any landmines too early in the game, I wonder: can manipulation occur in the absence of motivation? Read the rest of this entry »

by Torey Klucznik (@tklucznik), IABC Manager of Student Membership Marketing and Development

Email signatures are an essential way share contact information with the people you are communicating with online. Creating an effective signature that does not add unnecessary length or distract from the original message, and that represents your brand should not be overlooked as a key to keeping your professional reputation strong, especially in the age of mobile devices.

Although there are many opinions and ways to format your signature, the following tips will help you create a concise and simple signature for your communications. Comment below to share your thoughts on these tips and to add your own. See the 14 Dos and Don’ts after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

IPhone and Droid, you’re making a real mess of things. Facebook and YouTube, you are equally guilty. After companies have spent millions and millions of dollars creating corporate and organizational websites, you, dear friends, are making those sites less relevant.

It’s not that social networks are replacing brand websites entirely; it’s that mobile applications of all sorts are threatening to change the way we access the Internet and interact with each other. And with the limitations of mobile applications, websites with loads of pizzazz ask too much of what smaller, handier devices can do.

The changeover is not quite complete, but the mobile Web and social media are “contending for a big piece of the ‘traffic pie’ and has reached exponential growth before we realized the magnitude of its footprint,” according to a Webtrends whitepaper published in March of this year.